Appendix A. Command Line Config Management Tools 131
A.2. Red Hat Network Configuration Manager
Unlike the Red HatNetwork Configuration Client, the RedHat Network Configuration Manager
(rhncfg-manager) is designed to maintain RHN’s central repository of config files and channels,
not those located on client systems. This tool offers a command line alternative to the configuration
management features within the RHN website, as well as the ability to script some or all of the related
maintenance.
It is intended for use by Config Administrators and in fact requires an RHN username
and password that has the appropriate permission set. The username may be specified in
/etc/sysconfig/rhn/rhncfg-manager.conf or in the [rhncfg-manager] section of
~/.rhncfgrc.
When the Red Hat Network Configuration Manager is run as root, it attempts to pull in needed
configuration values from the Red Hat Update Agent. When run as something other than root, you
may have to make configuration changes within the ~/.rhncfgrc file. The session file is cached in
~/.rhncfg-manager-session to prevent logging in for every command.
The default timeout for the Red Hat Network Configuration Manager is 30 minutes. To alter this,
add the server.session_lifetime option and new value to the /etc/rhn/rhn.conf file on the
server running the manager, like so:
server.session_lifetime = 120
The Red Hat Network Configuration Manager offers these primary modes: add, create-channel,
diff, diff-revisions, download-channel, get, list, list-channels, remove, remove-channel, revisions, up-
date, and upload-channel.
Each mode offers its own set of options, which can be seen by issuing the command,
rhncfg-manager mode --help, such as:
rhncfg-manager diff-revisions --help
You can see such a list of options for the add mode at Section A.2.2.1 Add Options.
A.2.1. Creating a Config Channel
To create a config channel for your organization, issue the command:
rhncfg-manager create-channel channel-label
If prompted for your RHN username and password, provide them. You should see output resembling:
Red Hat Network username: rhn-user
Password:
Creating config channel channel-label
Config channel channel-label created
Once you’ve created a config channel, you have the remaining modes available for populating and
maintaining that channel.
A.2.2. Adding Files to a Config Channel
To add a file to a config channel, you need to specify the channel label, as well as the local file to be
uploaded, such as:
rhncfg-manager add
--channel=channel-label
/path/to/file
